


smoke, fire, it's all going up

by ms_scarlet



Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: Angry Sex, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Hate Sex, POV Rio (Good Girls), Rough Sex, non-verbal consent, spoilers through 303, you may have guessed that from the first three tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:35:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23047126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ms_scarlet/pseuds/ms_scarlet
Summary: "What the fuck kind of help did you want, Elizabeth? What did you think you were askin' for? For me to take care of it? What the fuck do you think that means?""I don't- I don't know-" She's sputtering, taking a step back at the sudden explosion."Yeah. Yeah, you do," he sneers. She likes to pretend she don't know shit, but he's seen the way her mind works, she knows exactly what's up even when she don't want to admit it to herself. "It means somebody gets dead. You just don't want it to happen where you can see it."He steps in, right back up against her. Close enough that he can feel the heat radiating off of her, a sharp contrast to the chill of the rain falling around them. "You talked a lot of shit about me puttin' it all on you like you weren't out there tryin' to put your dirty work on me so you could keep your lily-white hands clean."She snaps. Rio sees it in her face, and a part of him uncoils. There she is.
Relationships: Beth Boland/Rio
Comments: 56
Kudos: 283





	smoke, fire, it's all going up

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a nice fic. 
> 
> Title from White Flag by Bishop Briggs

_There ain't no fuckin' way that lying bitch is fuckin' pregnant._

Rio'd been so sure.

Fuck that, he's still sure. He doesn't know how the fuck Elizabeth'd got to the doc, but that'd be just like her to have somehow gotten her hooks in there. He'd thought he'd sewn that up by takin' her to Rhea's doc. Her office’s on the opposite side of the city from her ‘burb, Elizabeth'd have no reason to haul her ass this far out just for a baby doc, it's not like she's a specialist. 

_There's no fuckin' way._

Rio hurls himself into the Mercedes, slamming the door. He grips the wheel, and tries to steady his breathing, tries to see through the white-hot rage clouding his vision.

After that night in the bar, he'd backed off for a while. He'd learned over the years it was better to cool down, act with a clear head, and his head had been anything but clear that night. He'd seen that as soon as he'd calmed down enough to realize there was no fuckin' way that bitch was pregnant, but she'd got one over on him enough to walk out of there breathin' and if he could kill her extra for that he would. 

That never would've happened if he'd had his head on straight. 

Then he'd started thinking about how much fun he could have with this. She wants to play games? Fine. Call him the fuckin' gamemaster. She'll die wishin' she'd listened to him when he said it's better to do it fast than draw it out. 

Not too much though, he didn't- he had better things to do with his time than fuck with her pretty little head. 

It'd been fun, though. Watchin' her squirm. Knowin' she knew he knew. That she could stop this fuckin' farce at any time and face the consequences. 

It'd been fun right up until she fuckin' squirmed her way right off the hook and god _dammit_ how the _fuck_ had she done that. 

Fury thrumming through him, he starts the car and peels out of the lot, tires squealing and smoking. He hopes she came out the door in time to see him leave. Almost wishes he could see her face when she realizes he'd left her with all her shit still in his car, no way to get home, and a whole lot of neighborhoods that don't give a fuck about people that look like her between her and the big ol' house. 

_Figure it out, bitch._

He weaves through the streets of Detroit, reckless in a way he doesn't usually let himself be because it attracts too much attention, but he's got too much running in circles in his head to care. 

The weather's started to turn, clouds rolling in promising a storm as dark as the day had been sunny a half an hour ago.

_There's no fuckin' way she's pregnant. She got to the doc somehow._

He presses down on the gas pedal a little harder, revving the engine, and nearly startling the Civic he whips around up onto the curb. 

_Congratulations_.

There was a minute there, when the doc confirmed her lie, that he'd felt- he doesn't even know. Something he's got no business feelin' that's for damn sure. 

To straighten himself out, he counts it off. One, she's a liar. Two, on the off chance she ain't lyin', there's no way in hell that's his kid. Three, even if it were-

His stomach flips over the way it had in the exam room, and he swallows hard. 

_It doesn't matter, she's full of shit._

He just misses a yellow light and slams on the breaks, tires screeching up to the intersection. The abrasive noise suits his mood, so does the burning rubber smell. 

He drums his fingers on the steering wheel, thoughts whirring too fast for him to catch hold of one, a tangled snarl of emotion roiling under his skin. 

A glint of light catches the corner of his eye, and he clocks the pocket knife some white boy wanna-be-banger kid's just flipped out of his pocket. He perfunctorily scans him and his friend, classifying them as tweakers, fuckin' amateurs, 'bout to start some shit that’s none of his business. He's about to dismiss them entirely when he realizes they're creeping up on a pregnant lady alone at the bus stop. It's that same chatty bitch from the clinic, the one who played into his game so beautifully without even knowing it, and she's utterly oblivious to the stupid shit that's about to come down on her, cradling her belly and whispering happily to it. 

Rio heaves out a sigh and rolls down his window. 

"'Ey." The lady looks over, but he's not looking at her, he waits until the morons behind her realize he's talking to them and he stares, tilting his chin up just so, so they can see his ink. 

Whatever the kids see in Rio's face, they have enough brain cells left that it has them staggering back, trippin' over themselves to get away, and that's alright then. 

"Tha-" The light turns green, and he peels out, cutting off whatever bubbly bullshit she was about to say. He doesn't want her gratitude, he wants her to not be so fuckin’ oblivious and to get herself home, but if he could get women to not be so fuckin’ stupid, he wouldn't be in this mess in the first place. 

Doesn't she know sitting alone like that, lookin' so small and vulnerable, and not paying attention to what's happening around her is the same thing as an engraved invitation to some of these assholes? 

Elizabeth, on the other hand, she at least knew to walk tall and try to hide her soft spots. Maybe if she weren't so fuckin' good at that, they could' ve- Could've what? Fuckin' nothing. She made her choices. 

Rio realizes he's rubbing the scar next to his heart, the one that aches a little more than the others, and drops his hand like it burns. 

He thinks of her back in the clinic, so scared he could nearly smell it. Lyin' on that table using every inch of that monumental will of hers to hold herself still and not let herself give in to the trembling he could see in the tips of her fingers. He thinks about how she was so pale she was nearly gray and how those big blue eyes were full of a storm too big, too violent, for her to hide. He thinks about that rueful little smile she gave him like she couldn't believe what the doc was saying either but still had the fuckin' nerve to try and say _I told you so_ anyway. 

_She's a fuckin' liar, and she can get herself home. Call a fuckin' Uber or some shit if her girls can't come get her._

Then he remembers he threw her phone out the window when they got on the highway, not wanting it to be traceable if- _when_ \- he killed her. 

_Serves her the fuck right._

He hits the gas a little harder, not even knowing where he's driving anymore. 

A few preliminary raindrops sprinkle his windshield. 

He thinks about those dumbass tweaker kids and how it seems like there's a pair of them on every corner these days, desperation for fuckin' pills making them stupider, more reckless than usual. Elizabeth ain't exactly a shrinking violet, she'd have faced them down, run her mouth.

And probably got herself stuck full of holes for it if they wanted her shit bad enough. The shit she ain't even have because it was in the backseat of his car, but who would believe a lady like her would leave her house without a single scrap of anythin'?

With a harsh curse, Rio throws on the hand brake sending the SUV into an abrupt, squealing spin, the weight of the back whipping him around. He goes up on two wheels, everything suspended for an eerily still, timeless moment right on the knife's edge of flipping- long enough for him to think _what the_ fuck _am I doing-_ before he crashes back down, having cut across three lanes of traffic, now facing the opposite direction. He slams his foot on the gas heading back towards the clinic. 

_Like hell anybody else's gonna kill that bitch._

When he gets back to the clinic, she ain't there. He pulls the SUV up on the sidewalk in front of the door and bursts into the waiting room, scanning for that telltale golden red, but all he finds is a sea of confused and slightly alarmed faces. 

He storms up to the reception desk, the woman who'd been at the desk scrambling aside. The nurse he'd been so friendly with before when he had Elizabeth tethered by the wrist blinks at him, clearly taken aback by the abrupt and dramatic change in demeanor. 

"Where is she?"

"Your-" The nurse frowns, stumped at what to label Elizabeth. _Join the fuckin' club._ "The redhead, right? Beth?"

"Yeah, where'd she go?"

"She, um, she left? Right after you did? Oh! She said to send you the bill for the appointment but couldn't confirm if we had the right mailing address on file, can you take a-"

Rio's gone before she can finish her question. 

The SUV's where he left it, door open, engine still running and having attracted some curious bystanders who scatter like a flock of birds when he jumps in and slams the door. It's raining in earnest now. 

_Fuck._

He needs to get himself in check. He wouldn't tolerate this kind of loud bullshit from anyone and from him? Un-fuckin-acceptable.

Even as he's thinking it, another part of his brain's coming up with the closest bus stop, trying to figure out if she'd know it, calculating how far she could've gotten with a full head of steam.

Disgusted with himself, he throws the car in gear and, without waiting for a break in traffic, careens left out of the lot and nearly flipping again as he slides on the newly wet pavement. Brakes squeal as the light afternoon traffic frantically rearranges itself around him to stay out of his way. 

Fuck her, and fuck this, and- _fuck,_ what is he _doing?_ He's got shit to do, people to meet, a business he's in the middle of resurrecting. He does not have the fuckin' time to be chasing her down. He ain't playin' this anymore. When he finds her, it's over. She's gonna-

_There._

He sees Elizabeth marchin' down the sidewalk, hands awkwardly hovering, like she don't know what to do with them without a big ass bag to hang on to. 

He guns it, and she turns, clocking the Mercedes instantly and going pale, clutching at the neck of that baggy ass sweatshirt she's rockin' these days. He's over a block away, but he can see her clear enough. She looks around, assessing and discarding options for a beat before she turns and races for an alley entrance a few feet away.

His lips peel back in a shark smile even as his blood boils. He and Rhea used to live over here, he knows the area and Elizabeth's not gonna like it when she realizes her escape route corners around to a dead end. 

Sure enough, when he screeches to a halt blocking off the bend in the alley, she's just reached the end to find nothin' but a crumbling brick wall, some shitty, nonsense tags, an abandoned, rusty shopping cart and enough broken glass that the ground looks like a deadly rainbow in the rain. 

She spins around when he slams out of the car. The growing storm's already wet down her hair; it's streaming down her face, the strawberry blonde darkening to deep red. 

"Get in the car, Elizabeth." 

"No." Her impossibly big, impossibly blue eyes radiate exhaustion and defeat, but she still spits it at him like a feral cat, and something twists in his chest. 

"Get in the fucking car." She flinches at his tone, harsh and unforgiving.

"Why? So you can take me home and disappear for weeks before you pop up and kill me?" She swipes furiously at her eyes, and he realizes that some of those raindrops are tears.

"I said, get. In the fucking. Car."

"You were right, are you happy?" She flings the words at him, face twisting. "This is so much worse, the waiting. The not knowing. I can't sleep, I can't eat-"

"Yeah?" He sneers, cocking his head. "Maybe that last one's 'cause you pregnant, right?"

The look she gives him is full of a thousand different things: rage, regret, and fear the least complicated to identify, and he can see the moment she surrenders.

"I'm not." She whispers it, but Rio hears the words crystal clear, and everything stops. 

He fuckin' knew it. He knew she was lying, he'd just wanted her to admit it, right? He _won._

It doesn’t feel like winning, it feels cold and hollow. That was it, the last lie. He can kill her now. 

He has to kill her now.

He doesn't move, and neither does she. She stares at him, chest heaving, and he stares back. 

The rain falls steadily between them, pitter-pattering against the ground.

Then, with a strangled sob she's lurching forward, right up against him, fumbling with the waist of his jeans and what the fuck is she- She's pulling his gun out, pressing it into his palm- he reflexively wraps his hand around the grip- and she's putting it to her forehead. All the while, she's sobbing her fuckin' eyes out, saying _just do it, just do it, just do it,_ over and over until it doesn't sound like words anymore. And then he's standing there, chest tight and fingers numb, the rain pouring down over them and she's looking up at him, face wrecked and he can't figure out her game. 

Does she think he's playin' with her? That he won't do it? She ain't fuckin' special, he's handled people he was close to before, it ain't a thing. Eddie's face flashes behind his eyes, and something in him tightens before he forces it back.

He shifts his grip, so the gun's at her chin, and he pushes a wet lock of hair off her forehead with his other hand. Her skin is so _soft_ , it's always been so soft. Her eyes flutter shut, and she shudders, close enough that he can feel it ripple through his whole body.

It'd been a while since he'd had anything that soft in his life. There's Marcus, bright and golden, but the rest is all clean lines, sharp angles and hard edges.

"You shot me." He doesn't know where the words come from, and from the way her eyes snap back open, she wasn't expecting them either. 

"I did." She says it without flinching, a statement of fact, and he almost smiles even as he hates her for it.

He should end it right now.

"You left me for dead." 

He didn’t mean to say that either. 

Her eyes spark, some of the fight coming back into them and fighting for dominance with the guilt clouding them over. 

"You abandoned me." 

The brass of her to stand there like this, with everything between them, and that kind accusation in her tone? It makes him see red but she ain’t done diggin’ her hole.

"You _kidnapped_ an FBI agent." Her eyes are full of fire now, and he's never seen anything like it, the way a woman like her gets so mad, fights so hard, with a gun in her face. Like she needs that edge to really get going. "You kidnapped _me._ "

Her voice breaks a little on the last word, and it leaves him feeling wrong-footed for a split second because he did do that, and he hadn't needed to. He can't even explain it to himself beyond he'd been so fuckin' mad at her it made him stupid. She's the only person that can make him stupid like that. That he _lets_ make him stupid like that. 

He's still not shooting her. He tells himself it's because they're in an alley in the middle of the day, and she hasn't made him that stupid yet.

"You asked for my help."

Now she's taking a step back, shaking her head, giving herself room to really dig into her anger. He barely even notices he's lowered his gun, he's so twisted up in the spectacle of her working herself into a genuinely magnificent rage.

"I didn't ask for- I didn't want that kind of help! You were going to make me _kill_ him!"

Suddenly he's furious. He'd thought he'd been there before, but the feeling that sweeps through him now is an inferno that blazes straight through everything in its path. 

"What the fuck kind of help did you want, Elizabeth? What did you think you were askin' for? For me to take care of it? What the fuck do you think that _means_?"

"I don't- I don't know-" She's sputtering, taking a step back at the sudden explosion. 

"Yeah. Yeah, you do," he sneers. She likes to pretend she don't know shit, but he's seen the way her mind works, she knows exactly what's up even when she don't want to admit it to herself. "It means somebody gets dead. You just don't want it to happen where you can see it." 

He steps in, right back up against her. Close enough that he can feel the heat radiating off of her, a sharp contrast to the chill of the rain falling around them. "You talked a lot of shit about me puttin' it all on you like you weren't out there tryin' to put your dirty work on me so you could keep your lily-white hands clean." 

She snaps. Rio sees it in her face, and a part of him uncoils. _There she is._

"Well, they're fucking dirty now, aren't they?" He doesn't think he's ever heard her say fuck. If he weren't burning with pent up fury and frustration and betrayal, he'd be into the way she spits it out. "What did _you_ think was going to happen if you kept putting a gun in my hand over and over again and telling me to clean up my messes? It's fucking medieval, right? Gotta kill the king to win!"

"There she is." He laughs, the taste of it as bitter and dry as ashes in his mouth. "I was wonderin' when the real you'd come out to play."

"What the _fuck_ is that supposed to mean?" She hisses, really getting into the feel of the word now.

"That you wanted to be on top, and you tried to take me out to get there." 

"That- That isn't what I wanted! That isn't even _close_ to what I wanted! I wanted- I thought- I thought we could-" Elizabeth's so furious, she's visibly shaking, that fuckin' blush blooming up her throat and across her face.

"I wanted us to…" She trails off, her mouth working, but no sound comes out.

"Yeah, well, you put a stop to any _us_ , too." He'd meant the business, but the us comes out weighted like he'd meant more than that.

 _"He took my kids!"_ The words explode out of her sounding more like a sob. "He took my kids and said the only way I could get them back is if I gave you up. So, yeah, I put a stop to _us_ for the sake of my children, and I'd do it again. They are _everything_ to me!"

"And you're so torn up about that, yeah? Kicked him out, huh?" He curses himself, he's making it sound personal when that ain't what this is.

"You- you-" She sputters at him, flailing around a little. "You were the one that started mailing me pieces of a _dead body._ " 

"You blocked my number." Rio snarls, which is _not_ what he'd meant to say, and he _hates_ that she trips him up.

_"That is not a proportionate response!"_

And it's just- Elizabeth's standing there in a dirty alley, soaking wet now with rain pouring down around her, gaping at him like a fish out of water like she can't believe _him_ and it's such an audacious non-sequitur, trying to tell him his behavior was inappropriate, that he can't- he wants- he _needs-_

He breaks.

He lunges for her, and she's there to meet him, fisting her hands in his soaked through shirt as he's fisting them in her soaked through hair, gun still in one of them, the grip digging into her skull but if she even notices she certainly doesn't care.

They crash together, a violent tangle of lips and teeth and tongues. The taste of her bursts in his mouth and the sound of their hungry, gasping noises fill his ears.

Rage and hate and want and need seethe and flare, all of it heightened past the point where he can tell what's what and all he knows is she's here, and he hates her, he wants her, he has her.

Rio stops thinking.

He bites her lip, and she rakes her nails down his neck. He turns them around and shoves her up against the front of the still running SUV. She bounces back at him, and he's shoving her back, hard enough that she'll probably bruise, and he doesn't fucking _care_. 

She doesn't either from the way she grabs him, yanking him in by the front of his shirt, attacking his mouth. He pins her down, dropping the gun on the hood of the Mercedes and grabbing her by her hair, holding her to him. 

She fumbles for his jeans, and he viciously slams his hips into hers, knocking her hands away and making her gasp against him. He's so hard it aches, but he's not lettin' her run this. 

He yanks her hair, forcing her head back, and she jerks, her hips rolling and grinding against him. He bites at her neck as he snakes a hand between them, wrenching her jeans open and then spinning her around, pushing her up against the hood. 

She slides a little against the wet metal, and he readjusts his grip, holding her down and bent over with a hand on the back of her neck as he unbuttons his jeans with the other.

She's panting and flailing around, trying to find something to hold onto as he yanks down her jeans and panties, giving himself a moment to run his hand down the curve of her ass before he spreads her open, lines himself up and buries himself inside her in one rough stroke.

She cries out as he bottoms out, and for a moment, everything is soft, wet, heat, and something in him that'd been clenched for fuck knows how long relaxes.

The idea that some part of him had been what? Waiting for this? Nah. It's got him pulling nearly all the way out and brutally slamming back into her, not giving her any time to adjust before he's doing it again and again and again.

She's finally got a grip on the side of the car, anchoring herself against the front panel, and she uses the leverage to surge back against him, matching him thrust for thrust. He digs his fingers into her hip, and she's definitely gonna be bruised as fuck tomorrow. The knowledge comes with a nearly savage burst of pleasure, and he speeds up, pounding everything he's feeling, everything he can't name, can't look at, doesn't understand, into her over and over again. 

When he comes, it crashes over him out of nowhere, completely blindsiding him and feeling less like release and more like relief. Everything whites out and static fills his ears, and when he comes back to himself, he realizes from the way she's pulsing around him that she came with him.

Rio recoils, pulling out and letting go of her like she's burned him, and she staggers, her knees giving out a little. 

The rain's still pouring around them, something he'd completely lost track of in the moment and _fuck_ how does she do this to him every fucking time. He's always in control, always knows what's happening around him, he's staked his entire business, his reputation, hell, his fuckin' _life_ on it. 

His jeans are pretty well soaked through at this point, so he doesn't bother cleaning himself up, just tucks himself away, suddenly exhausted. 

Elizabeth's straightening herself out, blinking at him but keeping her fuckin' mouth shut for once in her life. Like maybe she realizes he doesn't know what comes next either, and the uncertainty makes him more dangerous than the opposite. One wrong move might put her foot down square on a landmine. 

It's not a wrong assumption under usual circumstances, but right now, he doesn't have it in him. He remembers that night way back when outside her house when she'd stood there in her robe and button-up old man pajamas, defeated and telling him she just wants it to be over and he thinks he knows exactly how she feels.

Like fuck he's gonna let her know that, though.

"Get in the car." He grabs his gun off the hood and tucks it into the back of his jeans as he climbs into the driver's seat. He pauses halfway into the car and looks over. She's still standing there, soaked and shivering and looking younger than he's ever seen her look and that same something inside him twists. 

"What- Where're- Are you…?"

"I'm takin’ you back to your pretty lil' house and your pretty lil' family, so get in the car and shut the fuck up about it."

She takes a step towards the passenger side and stops, pulling herself up, clearly trying to reclaim some type of dignity. "Are you still going to kill me?"

His entire body feels like it's made of lead, tons upon tons of heavy, toxic metal pulling him down into the Earth. 

"Maybe tomorrow. Get in the car, Elizabeth."

And she gets in the car, so at least he's got that going for him.

_Fuck._

**Author's Note:**

> Don’t play with firearms while you hate sex with your nemesis in a dirty, rainy alley, kids. It’s a good way to get tetanus and/or shot.
> 
> You can also find me on [tumblr](https://mego42.tumblr.com/) reblogging gifsets and crying in my tags.


End file.
